Search Results for: diceware

Diceware Video

The idea of choosing a list of common words as a password is fairly common and can lead to very secure passwords if the selection process is done randomly. The idea entered popular culture with the famous XKCD correct horse … Continue reading

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Diceware as a Pipeline

If you’re interested in picking a passphrase using the Diceware method but don’t want to bother with compiling a program for what is most likely a one-off use, you’re in luck. Dr. Drang over at And now it’s all this … Continue reading

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Diceware in Lisp

I recently downloaded the Ironclad Cryptography Library with quicklisp and wanted to give it a spin. I thought a nice little project would be to implement the Diceware password generation algorithm in Lisp. This turned out to be really easy. … Continue reading

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Diceware Implementation (Part 2)

Last time I presented an implementation of the Diceware method for generating a secure password. Today I’d like to finish up with a few details. First, the careful reader might wonder why I generated 4 random bytes with RAND_bytes instead … Continue reading

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An Implementation of Diceware

A few of my recent posts (1, 2, 3) discussed the Diceware method of choosing a password. The idea is that you roll a die 5 times to get a 5 digit number and use that number to look up … Continue reading

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Modulo Bias

A common operation in software is to reduce a larger number to a smaller one by the modulo operation. As a toy example, suppose we have random numbers in the range 0–7 but need to reduce those values to the … Continue reading

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The Pass Password Manager

A recurrent theme here at Irreal is that you really need to be using a password manager. Let it generate a long, unique, random key for each site and protect those keys with a secure master password (generated by, say, … Continue reading

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Password Cracking Times

Over at Better Buys they have an interesting post on password cracking times. The post includes an interactive app that lets you estimate the cracking time for various passwords. They also include several examples that show how cracking time is … Continue reading

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Password Enforcement

Ryan Winchester has a nice post complaining about the stupid password rules that some sites enforce. It’s not that Winchester and the rest of us aren’t in favor of stronger passwords or even that we mind some rules that might … Continue reading

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The//Intercept on Choosing Passwords

The//Intercept has an excellent article on how to choose secure passwords that are (relatively) easy to remember. The problem with passwords is that they are almost never secure. Most people choose stupid ones (password, 123456, \(\dots\)) and even those of … Continue reading

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